How can someone set profiles to private when the were born in the 1880's? [closed]

Question

I am trying to connect family members to a profile that is set to public, born in 1888.  This profile has two siblings set to private that were born in the 1880's.  I can't add a family member, nor see who these two profiles are for the siblings.  How can this be allowed?

Comments

"How can this be allowed?" since they were born after 1869 and in fact born after 1880 ... and are green padlocks ... however since the earliest listed child was born 1883 and the last born listed child was born 1896, and there is a question about the names of those two female children labeled "private" who are without doubt dec'd by now cerainly before the year 2000 ...

And you have investigated the census records for Charles Lafayette Moore and his spouse -- whomever she might be since she isn't listed (another mystery) ... I would say it would be the 1900 and 1910 Census you would want to compare 

1910 I see ruth L, robert leo, leila blanche, paul, etc so this is the family

"United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MLWP-FFN : accessed 11 December 2019), C Lafayette Moore, Decatur, Burt, Nebraska, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 25, sheet 6A, family 70, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 839; FHL microfilm 1,374,852.

Household

Role

Sex

Age

Birthplace

C Lafayette Moore

Head

Male

58

Ohio

Annetta M Moore

Wife

Female

52

Iowa

E Eugene Moore

Son

Male

26

Nebraska

Rachel H Moore

Daughter

Female

24

Nebraska

Robert L Moore

Son

Male

21

Nebraska

Leilia B Moore

Daughter

Female

19

Nebraska

Ruth L Moore

Daughter

Female

17

Nebraska

Paul E Moore

Son

Male

14

Nebraska

Margret A Moore

Daughter

Female

11

Nebraska

Charles Lafayette Moore (1851–1917) | Person | Family Tree | FamilySearch

married myra annetta marsh, by the way 

so all the particulars are here, and you can deduce the names of the "missing" girls from the census listings 

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Well, while others are discussing I'm not sure what, have you been able to access that 1910 Census, Hans? That, and the 1900 Census will probably list the known children, those who survived to be listed on the two census.  It is a method I use fairly extensively to discover the children a couple may have had. Sometimes people are memorialized at FAG but the list of children, when there is one, "seems incomplete" when dates are compared, so I hunt up the census most likely to embrace most if not all the children. I also search at familysearch for the couple themselves to see if there is listed the death records of any of the children, or birth records. Since it appears the children in the family you are interested in were born before 1905/1910 -- which is when I think there was enacted a fed. law that requires states be informed by the counties of the births, and duplicated records were created at county and at state levels -- they would not have an actual birth record I suppose ... then I have to search for the death record of the individual to discover what the DOD was and compare that to cemetery, burial and SSDI if there is one 

Answer 1

Hi Hans, Wikitree policy states that you can have private profiles within certain guidelines - if they were born less than 150 years ago or died less than 100 years ago. So profiles of people born in 1869 or before or died in 1919 or before MUST be opened, and you can send an open profile request form for that. You can’t edit the profiles there because they are “green locked” (public but non editable). What I would do personally is PM the profile manager, Ken Hess, to collaborate with him. He seems to be very very active on Wikitree and will likely: add you to the trusted lists of the profiles, open them up for you, or explain why he can’t do those things. I would contact him.

Comments

All this does is ensure there are multiple profiles for the same person.  So much for one tree.

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I think we can rely on Dennis Wheeler's answer as a possible remedy for whatever is making you unhappy, Hans. However, having defined the problem, have you some viable suggestions for remedy? And if you can retag your question for "Genealogy Help" or for "Wikitree Help" something might be suggested that might resolve your dilemma

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Hans, Liz's answer explains how to get your family members added-- by contacting the profile manager of the private profile.  Not sure how that answer leads to the conclusion that doing so ensures creation of duplicates.

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I ;need a quick refresher on how to give someone access to one of my tree family that does not meet the criteria of being  >150 born or >100 death. I see the commentary on this. But i just need to give him access to a person on my tree. How?

Ken Hess

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Hi Ken! Either you can open up the profile so anyone can edit the person (this one is the best for collaboration! Go to the profile, find the privacy tab, and then scroll down, click open, and click save) or you can add them to the trusted list - you just have to get Hans’ email first. Same tab, but scroll down a bit more. I hope that helps!

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Ken, if Hans sends you a request to be added to the Trusted List of the profiles he has something to add to, you will should receive email notifications for each profile. You just have to follow the link in the mail to grant access to the person.

Answer 2

Hey Hans! Did you already try to contact the profile manager of Robert Moore? I think that contacting the profile manager would be the best way to approach a situation like this. (Plus he might have some research that is not on WT yet!) Best of luck :-)

Answer 3

None of the answers so far have addressed the issue of whether the WikiTree guidelines are reasonable.  I think they are not.  What is the purpose of private profiles--to protect living people?  Then why does dying less than 100 years ago make sense?  How about 50 instead, as a start?

Comments

Isabelle and Fiona,

I was not going to post to this thread again, but now that you have both commented, I do want to explain my position, and I hope no one will see it as rude or hostile.  In the last two days I have thought a lot about WikiTree, and G2G, and my interactions with others, both on G2G and with the Rangers.  I believe I have a coherent position, which I have not yet fully  explained.

First, I am in favor of free speech, nearly all the time, except when it is aggressively rude.  Of course, everyone has his/her idea of what that is.  And then, of course, people have the right to criticize others, again best if they are not aggressively rude, and if they don't drag on the debate to boring lengths.  But I don't want to see us hiding reasonable debate because some sensitive people might feel offended.

Second, I am in favor of free information.  I don't want you to think that it just didn't occur to me that people who have been dead for less than 100 years could have living children.  I understand that.  But in the age of the internet, newspapers.com, Ancestry.com, state-sponsored vital records on-line, public obituaries, and so many other things, I don't believe it is realistic to think that anyone can conceal records about themselves, let alone their long-dead parents.  If I wanted to, I imagine I could put your grandparents on my Ancestry tree and then any subscriber could see the records that are not available on WikiTree.  I doubt that WikiTree wants to go through another debate, or offend a segment of its existing members, but nevertheless I think we are behind the times.

Editing to add:  Don't we join WikiTree, or do genealogy wherever we do it, to learn about our families and to share information with others?  Don't we want to learn how we are related to one another?  How is it helpful for people to conceal information?  

Note:  Subject to future edits for clarification.

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The reason it is people born 100 years ago for death is because the vast majority of people do not live past 100 years, so you can open up profiles over 100 years old on the assumption that they are now dead, without necessarily having the proof, although that is obviously nice to have. If it was 50 years, you'd definitely need to have concrete evidence, to be able to open them up. You'd have to be very careful what you put in the biography, because of the livng people they were attached to. Living people have rights to privacy enshrined in law, whether we like it or not. Personally I am happy with Wikitree's arbitrary dates and don't want them changed.

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But the two profiles that Hans posted about were women who were born in the 1880s-1890s and died in the 1960s.

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Julie, even though those women are no longer alive, their children may be.  The privacy rights of the children are what is being protected by not exposing all the details of their parents' lives.

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I know, Gaile.  You've said that.  I was responding to Gillian's comment that profiles over 100 years old can be opened on the assumption that they're dead.

This is one respect in which I like Ancestry better.  They only hide living people.  Everything else can be public.

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WikiTree is a whole lot more public than Ancestry. WikiTree profiles are visible to everyone on the Internet, and they can be found in internet searches.

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Are the WikiTree guidelines reasonable or not? My impression is that plenty of WikiTreers think they are reasonable. Some even think it should be allowed to keep profiles private even longer. If you really want to get a feeling about this, see https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/365669/should-all-profiles-of-people-born-150-died-100-years-ago-open and other discussions linked from there.

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As I said earlier, that was over two years ago.  How many new members are there since then?

And good point, Ellen, but WikiTree has 662,000 members. Ancestry has over 3 million paying subscribers (according to Google), and can be viewed free at many public libraries.

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they might have living children.  They need to be protected for that reason.  And someone born in 1880 could have had children when they were 50, ie 1930, said children still alive.

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We're back to square one. Anyone who wants to revisit the rules is free to propose a rule change. AFAIK there is no rule on WikiTree that requires rules and standards to be systematically reviewed after two years.

Answer 4

Moderator Note: I am taking the extreme measure of hiding an answer by Dennis Wheeler. Hiding that post has the effect also of hiding nine comments added after that answer by Liz Marshall, Hans Nielsen, Dennis Wheeler, Susan Smith, Julie Kelts, Gaile Connelly. I am hiding them because the series of posts do not shed meaningful light on the subject of the original question, and it had deteriorated into discussion of other members' behavior.

Comments

Ellen, but what's with all the flags here?  Can you clear those?  IMHO there isn't anything objectionable or out of order about those posts.  There seems to be a serial flagger on the loose tonight.

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Yes, there's a whole lot of flagging going on. I think that frayed nerves are causing some folks to be hyper-sensitive. It looks to me like they flagged posts where they perceived an unduly contentious tone.

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Ellen, the comments to Dennis's answer were not hidden.

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Actually maybe they are hidden.  I'm also a moderator so I can see them. But they are not greyed out.  BUT the name of the commenter IS greyed out so perhaps the average viewer does not see the entire thread.

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Thank you, Jillaine and Ellen.  Honestly, I did not think I was being unduly contentious here (although I confess I have been on some other recent threads lately).  I am still a fairly new WikiTree member and wasn't aware that the question of how long a profile should remain private had been discussed before.  That said, however, WikiTree's membership grows and changes over time, and a review every two years doesn't seem unreasonable.

Jillaine, the answer that Ellen hid and comments following it are not visible to me.  (You could probably log out and view the thread to verify for yourself.)

Answer 5

Open profile request is the way to go if the profile manager is no longer active, or does not respond to your requests sent via PM and messages placed on the profile. I found some profiles like this a while ago and I went through the Open Profile Request, explaining that the people attached to the one I wanted to edit (born in mid 1800's) had no birth or death dates so were private, but my research shows that they ought to be open (I gave the dates). They were opened up within a day or so of making the request.

Some profiles have been around a long time, since before the current rules and now and then, this issue comes up. I suspect there may also be some where managers have deliberately removed dates in order to keep the profiles from being open, at least this is what it looked like with the ones I found. The person obviously did not understand the collaboratory nature of the site and was no longer active.

The Wikitree arbitrary cut-offs are only a problem if we/others don't follow the rules and use the necessary procedures, some of which take a little time. Changing the dates of these cut-offs would just shift the problem along the line and bring in problems with GDPR. It would also mean that PMs had less control over the quality of their own close relatives' profiles. If another person wants to contribute, there is trusted list request for that. The only problem I don't see being resolved by following procedure is the "I want it now" foot stamping culture.